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The Women of the Conquest: Malinche, Tecuichpo, and Doña Isabel
Season 2 Episode 55
Episode 55 of The Conquistadors turns to the often-overlooked women who shaped the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Lucas and Luna explore the lives of th…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Cempoala: The Totonac City That Betrayed the Aztecs
Season 2 Episode 54
Long before Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan, he made a crucial stop in the Totonac city of Cempoala. This episode explores how the luxurious, flower-f…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
The Requerimiento: A Legal Cover for Conquest
Season 2 Episode 53
The Requerimiento was a legal document read to Indigenous peoples before conquest, demanding submission to the Spanish crown and Church under threat …
3 weeks, 6 days ago
The Indigenous Allies Who Built Spanish America
Season 2 Episode 52
Beyond the familiar story of Cortés and the Tlaxcalans, the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica relied on tens of thousands of indigenous allies from doz…
3 weeks, 6 days ago
The Mita System: Inca Labor Under Spanish Rule
Season 2 Episode 51
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Inca mita system — a traditional labor tax that the Spanish repurposed into a brutal engine of exploitati…
4 weeks ago
The Conquest of Yucatán: Montejo's Long Struggle
Season 1 Episode 50
When Francisco de Montejo first attempted to conquer the Maya of Yucatán in 1527, he faced a fragmented but fiercely resistant network of city-states…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
Tlaxcalan Allies: The Unlikely Empire-Builders of New Spain
Season 1 Episode 49
When Hernán Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan, his most crucial allies were not Spanish soldiers but the Tlaxcalans—a fiercely independent republic that…
1 month ago
The Mayan Caste War: Yucatán's Last Indigenous Rebellion
Season 1 Episode 48
The Caste War of Yucatán, which erupted in 1847 and continued for decades, was one of the most successful Indigenous rebellions in the Americas. This…
1 month ago
The Cocoliztli Epidemics: Disease That Toppled an Empire
Season 1 Episode 47
When Hernán Cortés and his men landed in Mexico, they brought more than steel and gunpowder. Smallpox, measles, and typhus ravaged indigenous populat…
1 month ago
The First Encomienda: Isabela and the Birth of Colonial Labor
Season 1 Episode 46
Columbus's first settlement on Hispaniola, La Isabela, failed—but its legacy was the encomienda system. This episode traces the origins of colonial f…
1 month ago